Tag Archives: Occupancy

By Kendra DeKeyrel

IBM TRIRIGA and Cisco have teamed up to give you the tools you need to deploy location sensing using your existing WiFi network infrastructure. This solution helps you scale quickly and get faster, more accurate occupancy insights, to enable you to reimagine and streamline your connected spaces…

With this partnership, IBM TRIRIGA’s IoT and AI-driven insights application, IBM TRIRIGA Building Insights, now natively integrates with Cisco’s DNA Spaces cloud service. If you’re a space planner or manage facilities, you can quickly take advantage of these insights. With a lower cost to entry, you can understand how facilities are being used based on data coming in from an existing network…

If you need to quickly address new occupancy demands, please attend an IBM/Cisco webinar. Designed for space planners and facilities managers, we will explain how true occupancy insights enables you to make strategic space management decisions. Register today.

Join us on May 13 for IBM TRIRIGA Academy

Soon, we’re launching IBM TRIRIGA Academy. This is a new virtual learning platform designed for real estate and facilities professionals who want to create a smarter business. Participate in our sessions, schedule a demo, and interact with subject matter experts…

[Admin: This post is related to the 01.28.20 post about enhancing TRIRIGA UX Perceptive apps with artificial intelligence, and the 03.22.16 post about the former Watson IoT Academy, now moved to the Skills Gateway.]

Buildings that support occupant happiness and productivity sound great. So what’s the catch? Occupant well-being and happiness is much harder to quantify compared to environmental factors such as energy efficiency. Also, there aren’t yet well-recognized rating systems, although the International WELL Building Institute is making some headway. But the bigger puzzle for the smart building ecosystem to solve is: How much do building conditions really contribute to occupant happiness? How should building investments be balanced with other areas such as IT?

According to a recent Smart Building report from Aberdeen Group, modern Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) – driven by IoT, analytics, and cognitive computing – are central to the rise of the smart building. Buildings and workplaces are massive generators (and consumers) of data. The capture and analysis of data enable organizations to gain deeper insights into operational effectiveness, accelerate their ability to react to change, and increase returns from real estate-related decisions. As cognitive computing services continue to gain momentum, many organizations are starting to explore different ways artificial intelligence can help to optimize occupancy experiences.

The rise of the intelligent, connected work space

Data captured by buildings can be augmented by cognitive capabilities for use in IWMS such as IBM TRIRIGA – to help make decisions, alert management on issues, in addition to providing buildings with virtual concierge services. Improved insights, automation, and control can have a significant impact on all aspects of real estate performance – from lease accounting and capital projects, to facility maintenance, space utilization, and energy consumption.

Five smarter building transformation use cases

As facilities management moves beyond cost control, IWMS users will continue to climb the maturity curve – capturing information, identifying the signals to make better operational and predictive decisions. The end-goal of becoming more competitive through facility amenities and occupant experiences is something that only IoT can deliver – through the availability of information, automation of tasks and application of advanced analytics. Make the leap to smarter buildings. Here are 5 use cases where IWMS, IoT, and analytics are central to building transformation:

1. Increase Insight into Facilities Performance and Maintenance…

2. Develop New Services…

3. Improved Resource Tracking and Better Space Management…

4. A More Proactive Service Model…

5. Better Energy Usage…

[Admin: This post is related to the 02.02.17 post about owning the building IoT, and the 10.26.17 post by Planon about technology trends by 2022. To see other related posts, use the Smart Buildings tag.]

Around the world, changes to the way we manage and measure facilities performance continue to place an onus on real estate executives. They must understand their holdings, and make more strategic decisions with regard to their overall portfolio. These decisions are influenced by many factors, particularly the impact of leases on the balance sheet and operations and maintenance costs. IBM continues to invest in our intelligent buildings platform, IBM TRIRIGA, to help our clients tackle the various changes occurring…

IBM TRIRIGA helps reduce the effort to meet new leasing standards

We want to help organizations comply with the new standards and understand the implications of these changes. IBM TRIRIGA supports the complete lifecycle of facilities management and will automate compliance activities to address changes that affect multiple teams and roles…

IBM TRIRIGA helps improve occupancy experience

There are also new capabilities to improve day-to-day and occupancy experience. Organizations can leverage a new Workplace Services offering that engages every-day employees through new mobile web apps that provide access to services managed by IBM TRIRIGA, anywhere, and on any device…

IBM TRIRIGA provides a new design to better engage users

Decisions are only as good as the data that supports them. Optimizing native data sets and interfaces, and managing the process of collecting and contextualizing external data, is critical. New capabilities focus on enhancing the IBM TRIRIGA Application Platform. This is the foundation for the various views and capabilities of the IBM TRIRIGA suite…

The following is a guest blog written by Itamar Roth, CBO at PointGrab.

Agile workplaces are a smart strategy for solving a number of pressing corporate problems: reining in mounting property costs by optimizing space, supporting workforce mobility, and attracting and retaining talent.

However, planning and managing these flexible environments is challenging because of the nature of agile spaces: people are constantly moving around and occupancy shifts from day to day, even hour to hour… Innovative occupants’ activity sensors can provide up-to-the-minute intelligence about space utilization that’s needed to plan and manage modern workplaces… Today, intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) sensor technology can be used to help lower expenses and design workplaces that provide the optimal employee experience.

Here are some of the latest advancements in commercial occupancy sensors and how they overcome some of these challenges.

The following is a guest blog written by Alison Dahlman of Condeco Software, leading providers of occupancy sensing and digital signage technology, as well as room and desk booking tools. Condeco works with the world’s most progressive brands to reconfigure and maximize their dynamic workplaces…

Most businesses assume they have 60-70% workspace utilization, when it is significantly lower. If you take into account that real estate is among the highest expenses for a business, the financial implications for more efficient workspace usage are huge. Here’s the case for workplace management software…

1. The Rising Cost of Corporate Real Estate. Globally, real estate costs are at an all-time high. As costs rise, it is imperative your company maximizes real estate and monitors usage to avoid wasted space…

2. An Increase in Flexible & Remote Job Opportunities. As companies offer greater work flexibility, the number of flexible or remote employees has increased. By 2020, researchers predict that flexible working will be the main mode of working for 70% of organizations…

3. Productivity is Key. Rather than measure how long someone spends at a desk, productivity needs to be monitored in terms of goals and deliverables. If you adapt to the physical and virtual world of work, you can foster greater productivity…

4. Attract & Retain the Best Talent. The average cost to replace a team member is $40,000, so keeping your top talent is a worthwhile investment. Additionally, when seeking prospective employees from younger generations, think about building a corporate culture that’s more in-tune with today’s work and lifestyles…

Several factors are inspiring designers to “up the ante” in the creation of office designs today. One factor is that CEOs and upper management are electing to sit and work among their employees, in order to eliminate hierarchies and spur more democratic collaborations among departments and between individuals.

Another factor is the need to provide flexible work environments for individual and shared work, while ensuring the technology required at these workstations is mobile, invisible, and where possible, wireless. Finally, in order to attract and retain new generations of employees, and keep them healthy, productive, and happy, facility managers are seeking out new inspired and imaginative approaches to workplace design. Here are two strategies that address all of those factors.

Redistribution of space

The days of the large conference room are gone (along with their large conference tables). They’re simply underutilized in an era of more mobile and smaller, shared workspaces. There’s a widespread realization that open office plans, with low panels between workstations, generate more distractions than productivity…

Multipurpose circulation space

For decades, companies have viewed circulation as a necessary evil, as space required to get employees from one area to another. As a result, designers would program in a 35 to 40 percent circulation factor. Today, designs are increasing that to upwards of 50 percent, driven by the evolution of circulation into multipurpose experiential spaces essential to creativity and collaboration…